The weblog of Irfan Yusuf, bush lawyer, humorist and award-winning author, once a small-c conservative but now politically left right out. His often irreverent take on things appears in some newspapers in Australia and New Zealand and online. His comic memoir "Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist" was published in May 2009 and won the Iremonger Award for Public Issues Writing.

Monday, February 09, 2009

COMMENT: Bushfires ....

I spoke to a friend who lives just outside Melbourne. Her small town wasn't affected by the fires, but at least one neighbouring town was almost completely decimated.

I also received an e-mail from Indonesia. A former Indonesian delegate to Australia on a Muslim Leaders' Exchange Program run by the Australia-Indonesia Institute sent a heartfelt message.

Thus far, media have been extremely sensitive and sensible. However, it doesn't take long for things to change. Who knows whether the tabloids pick this up and use it as a tool to bash each and every individual who happens to tick a certain box on their census forms. In the past, they've had little trouble trawling online forums for comments allegedly representative of entire communities.

I managed to do some trawling of my own and located a small online forum where one of two people have made some insensitive remarks about the vistims and survivors of the bushfires. The same forum contains some fairly robust attacks on those who made the insensitive remarks.